Adam J. Choit

For now, I’ll take a break from all the ‘Crosswalk stuff.   Don’t worry though, I’ll have more updates with that soon.

For now, I’ll turn my attention to completely unrelated random subjects.  God, religion — all that crap.  Crap?  Actually, I guess I shouldn’t refer to that stuff as crap.  After all, god might punish me for it.

Now, I was raised Jewish, although my family was never very religious in the least bit.  We more or less just went through the motions and traditions, because well, that’s what most Jews do.

Nevertheless, I was ingrained with certain ideas as a child.  For one thing, using the phrase “god damn it” or “god damn this” or “god damn that” —- weren’t exactly encouraged in my household.  In fact, I could remember my mother scolding me for occasionally using such phrases.  She told me I’d be punished by god if I continued to say such things.

Anyway, flash forward to the present — today I consider myself an “agnostic Jew” — meaning basically I identify myself with the Jewish people, despite at least questioning the idea that a god exists in the first place.  But if I had to put money on it, I’d bet that there is no god.  Maybe some singular force of nature did indeed get the universe rolling, but surely there is no old man in the sky aware of my every move and thought.

I mean, I consider myself a pretty reasonable and rational person, but even today after I hear myself blurt out something like “Godammit, I don’t think the Mets are going to be very good in 2012″ — I feel a bit of regret afterward.  As if god (Mets fan or not) is now mad at me because I said such things.

It’s interesting though to think about that something my mom said to me as kid still has such an effect on me even to this day, as a fully-grown fairly-reasonable adult.  I guess the lesson here is one should never underestimate the power religiousness and god-lingo has on a young mind.

If a theist feels the maximum amount of guilt after blurting out a “godammit,” and an atheist feel no guilt whatsoever, where does that leave me?  I guess my real question is, now as adult agnostic, am I supposed to feel a little bad each time I say “godammit” or should I just feel guilty —– say, after every other time I use the phrase “godammit” ?…

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged, and I promise new videos very soon — but for now, you’ll have to continue to deal with my poor grammar, and run-on sentences.

At least I’m not as gullible as I used to be when I was a kid.

Back in middle school, I apparently inherited a teacher my older sister once had the joy of learning from.  His name was Mr. Hewlett.  Mr. Hewlett was an older dude, and not the friendliest looking guy in the world either.

Everyone used to say that Mr. Hewlett had both a glass eye, and a wooden leg, presumably due to injuries sustained in WWII.

Despite having both the look and walk to make this all seem somewhat possible, I don’t remember any single one of us ever proving anything.  Although, I’m sure people out there will tell you it’s true — about the glass eye and wooden leg.

Who really knew what this guy’s deal was — but we did know Mr. Hewlett’s ancestors have a town on Long Island named after them, and actually were around the area as early as the 18th century.  I remember Mr. Hewlett used to bring in his old musket, which I believed he said was passed down to him through the generations.  I don’t think it was loaded, or whatever you do with a musket, but still.  The dude was pretty hardcore no-nonsense.

Perhaps most notably, Mr. Hewlett would always scold students who out of habit put their pens in their mouth and chewed on ‘em.  He’d always yell out in a whiney-tone, “Not in your mouth!” — which I’m suddenly realizing now sounds even funnier in my head, for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, my sister once told me a story about how during one of Mr. Hewlett’s scolding-sessions, he once said “funk you”  to a student.  That’s right. “Funk you.”  Not  “Fuck you.” Funk you.  I guess that’s what threw me off, because it sounded believable in my mind back then — that the teacher would want to censor himself. Because after all, “fuck” one letter altered makes funk.

Eventually, in one way or another the truth came out,  and I found out for sure that Mr. Hewlett did not say funk you to a student.  Such shenanigans.  I guess I believed it for a minute. Whatever.

It’s still funny to this day to me, to envision Mr. Hewlett saying funk you.  You should try it now. Envision and hear your Mr. Hewlett-type teacher from when you were a kid saying funk you to a student.

Not that I’ve recently been inside a Toys R’ Us, but I do find myself inside one these stores every few years.  Many of the same traditional board games will always be on the shelves — whether it’s Monopoly, Life, Scrabble, or whatever.

These days with the Internetweb, and iPhones, we now can play many of these games without even being in the same place as our opponents.  I played Scrabble online against a friend recently, who lives nearly 3,000 miles away in NY.

For while it was a close game, but he started to take over.  I became frustrated, and while normally this would be when I would destroy the board and throw the game pieces about, electronically, none of this was possible.

“X-ing” out of a computer window does not provide the same anger release as that other stuff does.  Dammit.  Kinda reminds me of a bit by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg, who talked about the difficulties of getting into an argument with your girlfriend inside of a camping tent.  Basically he said exiting the tent and slamming the flap is not nearly as fun as slamming a door.

Here’s another regret I have —- never learning how to play the piano.  I played Trumpet when I was a kid, and have since learned how to play some guitar as a adult — but never learned piano.

We did have a 1980′s style Casio keyboard growing up, but beyond Heart & Soul and Chopsticks, I don’t know shit on piano.

It’s a shame, too, because I’d love to at least learn how to fake knowing how to play, if not actually learn how to play.

I mean, it couldn’t be too hard to fake knowing how to play, right?  Just a few simple songs, or chords might do the trick —- just enough to impress the people around me at any random hotel bar, who most likely don’t know anything about anything anyway.

Right now, I feel like I have a bunch of random stuff that’s not worthy of it’s own post, but needs to be cleared out of my phone…so here ya go –

I saw a man riding a bike.  He also had crutches secured to that bike.   This guy probably shouldn’t be riding in the first place.

The difference between being an adult and a kid, is that adults should just eat candy when it’s around.  As a kid, you are always willing to go out of your way for candy.  For adults, only once in a while going out of your way to get candy is acceptable.

I’m going to change my full name to just a single name -  “Reserved.”  Legally that would be my name.  I could sit just about anywhere/go anywhere without making any reservations.  I would be like some kind of Rosa Parks on crack.

If you don’t know what a mezuzah is in the Jewish religion, it is a piece of parchment (often contained in a decorative case) that is inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah.  A mezuzah is affixed to the doorframe…and is believed to bring long life and protection for members of the home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mezuzah-RS.jpg

Anyway, I was at MTD’s housewarming party over the weekend.   It being my first time at the place, I noticed all sorts of interesting nicknacks around.  Among them was a large plastic shield hung up inside, right next to the front door.

I asked about this item, and MTD said it was a plastic He-Man shield:

http://www.he-man.org/assets/images/collect_toy/he-man_shield.jpg

Hmm, an item that’s personal, placed near a door, and also represents protection.

…sounds like a gentile mezuzah to me.

…especially since He-Man is like the least Jewy looking person ever.  I gotta say, I haven’t met that many massively jacked blonde-haired Jewish dudes…

This is an anecdote/story/whatever that I often tell friends.

From Kindergarten to about 4th grade, there was an odd pattern with all of my teachers.

THEY ALL LEFT TEACHING AFTER A YEAR WITH ME.  Now, who’s to say whether or not this really had anything to do with me…

At Barnum Woods in East Meadow,  NY:  After Kindergarten, Mrs. Turnwall retired.   After 1st grade, Mrs. Reynolds retired.

At Vanderbilt Elementary in Dix Hills, NY:  After 2nd grade, Mrs. Oliver retired.  After 3rd grade, Mrs. Petrosky retired.

4th grade was a bit of a different story.  Half-way through that year, Mrs. Kennedy left.  This one couldn’t even make it the whole year with me.  The rumor was she had a alcohol problem.   Her replacement (interim teacher?) finished the year out,  but did not return the following  school year.   Jeez.

WHAT I DO?

A few weeks ago I was at a small barbecue.  Inside the house is/was a keyboard.  At some point during this lovely afternoon, a buddy of mine decided he was gonna play a little music.

He hopped on the keyboard, which of course has the ability to make all sorts of different sounds and tones.

One particular setting made the keyboard play very ice cream man-ish sounds.

Now, Eddie Murphy (I believe) once had a bit about how the ice cream enjoys teasing kids on the street, by pretending he doesn’t see them running after the truck.

Well, here’s a new way to mess with innocent children.   Provide the sound of a false ice cream man from an unspecified indoor location.

Yay for teasing children.

If you’ve never seen Dave Chappelle’s stand-up comedy routine, he’s got a funny bit all about cartoons.   He examines his favorite childhood cartoons from his now adult point of view.

One of the conclusions that Mr. Chappelle came to is that Pepe Le Pew is basically a womanizing rapist.

Not only does Pepe force himself upon females, he goes outside of his species, and tries to make sexytime with a black cat, which somehow always manages to get a white stripe painted down her back.

As poor a role model for children as a rapist skunk is, would you believe that it was Speedy Gonzalez cartoons that historically were found to be more offensive?  In fact, according to Wikipedia, “Speedy,” was once banned from Cartoon Network, citing Speedy’s Mexican mice friends as offensive stereotypes of laziness, slothfulness, and even drunkenness.

Maybe this is offensive, but keep in mind it was here in the U.S. where it was banned.  In Mexico, and in most of Latin America, the people historically are fans of the cartoon.

In the coming months and even years, I’ll likely be telling more and more Grandpa Sammy stories.

It must’ve been sometime in the late 1980′s or early 90′s — My grandpa parked the car across the street from a 7-11.  With my sister and I (us kids) waiting in the car, Sammy asked us if we wanted anything from inside the store.

For whatever reason, we both answered, “Tic Tacs.”

5 minutes later he comes out of the store with a couple of Kit Kat bars.

There’s nothing more hilarious than old people who are hard of hearing —- especially when it results in an unexpected chocolately surprise.